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Emerging Markets

Two years have elapsed under Indian Prime Minister Modi’s administration. This anniversary has been greeted by a flurry of commentary – on many aspects of legislative strategy, muscular diplomacy, and its penchant for branded programs – and of course by the administration’s own celebratory interim-victory-lap. But I’ll concern myself only…

Why should entrepreneurs care about the public discourse? Are they not meant to put their noses to the proverbial grindstone, work at their chosen passions, and leave high-minded discourse to pundits and policymakers? Largely, in my Boston home, I’d say yes, they can get away with not bothering with public…

The title of this post might sound absurd. If you’re newly off the blocks, chomping at the bit to get started on your new venture, have lined up a prototype, done enough rudimentary tests to convince yourself that it works, and need the money to fuel subsequent growth, the last…

It’s become fashionable to say that India is the only part of the BRICS set of countries that deserves adulation; only the “I” in BRICS is still standing. Current macro data and investor sentiment supports this point of view. Currency and stock markets are more robust than most and global media and India’s finance minister expressed…

I spent a few days this week shuttling between Bangalore and Delhi, and am writing this reflection on the very important topic of intellectual property as I saw it being discussed in the hubs of entrepreneurship and policymaking. In Bangalore, there was the entrepreneur’s lament, mine and that of others,…

When my family and I spent a month in China, traveling up and down the east coast with Shanghai as our anchor, I was appalled to see the extent of the contaminated food problem. At a practical level, the person on the street cannot be bothered, frankly because he or…

Even richer emerging markets must continue to harness talent. Harnessing latent talent is a central part of any country’s economic development story. I was reminded of this multiple times traveling through Chile this past week. Chile has been Latin America’s success story, having graduated to a per capita income that…

This post is part of my Thinking Like an Entrepreneur Series, where I attempt to distil my personal experiences for would-be entrepreneurs. Recognizing large patterns and trends in the environment is something that all entrepreneurs (and investors alike) want to do well. Such understanding can make a large difference; even…

Havard Gazette published an article on my upcoming on-campus university-wide course called Contemporary South Asia: Entrepreneurial Solutions to Intractable Social & Economic Problems. See the course trailer, produced for the course’s previous edition, on the sidebar. The article starts: “The existing system in many developing countries is not working for the…

The MOOC course Entrepreneurship and Healthcare in Emerging Economies that I wrote about earlier is moving full steam. The discussion board is buzzing: it is amazing to see what happens when people from across the globe participate in a class. Take this link to see where course participants have enrolled from.…